D31 PHOTOGRAPHY EXHIBITION 2023

Many residential streets in Amsterdam are filled with various plants, creating a calm greenspace within the hustle and bustle of the city.

After stopping for lunch in Amsterdam I stumbled across the Pride parade. The variety of people who had gathered to support the parade just showed an amazing sense of community which is all anyone can ask for when looking for things 'Right up your street'.

20 minute walk away from my house, there is an area with an array of independent shops. Wondering around, I walked into a furniture shop. Whilst, exploring their collection, I stumbled across this beautiful lamp. By greeting the lightbulb head on with my lense, I managed to capture a beautiful segment of the lamp shade interacting with this bulb.

There are inspiring cruxes in the day to day activities constantly happening in our immediate surrounding which are occupied by various endeavours of people. People’s struggling hardship to survive in the materialistic world often envisions me by means of forms. I am inspired by their toil for their needs towards their fundamental necessities that keep their spirit engaged with the whatsoever mundane predicaments they face. My creative pursuit is to explore covert realities of those people and their active space through different materials and try to bring my vision and perception through my visual/plastic medium. The ethnic cults of Indian subcontinent invokes in me the elements of spiritual truth hence to match with the ethnicity of people I chose unconventional materials and through their innovative use I fulfil the process of my creative imagination.

This is an image I took of the Malecon on a holiday to Havana in 2016. The Malecon is a place where many people of the city go to hang out, listen to music and just socialise with each other. It was a beautiful culture to witness.

This photo represents on how we need to stop and observe. In Los Angeles, we're always on the move. I hope this photo helps push the idea of taking a second to observe the beauty of your surroundings.

Israeli summer in a neiborhood

The first rays of the sun touch the roofs brining some beauty to a brutal urban surrounding.

This is the view right up the street. You can't help but wonder if the car is running towards or away from something beyond the street.

This picture This picture was taken in Tel Aviv not far from the place I live. It’s just a regular neighborhood right until the moment the sun goes down. Then the magic begins.

In Ukuzihlukanisa, Mpumelelo explores ideas of self-reflection, identity, and spirituality through black and white digital photographs. Through a series of self-portraits and portraits, he has produced a new body of work that takes inspiration from the isolation experienced during the national lockdown. In the initial stages he used his bedroom as a studio to make the self-portraits, seen in the choice of props used by the artist: bubble wrap, tin foil, lace fabric, bed sheets, and other materials found in a home. The images attempt to depict the meditative state of the artist when he started to wonder about the biblical concept of an angel and how he could elevate himself spiritually to attain the level of divinity and purity described in the holy book. As the process developed, Mpumelelo invited his friends to participate in the act of imagemaking, reflecting a need for companionship drawn from his inclusion of others in this introspective work. This body of work asks us to consider a time when man (human) as described in the bible was holy and without sin. Could this be Mpumeleloʼs way of coping with the isolation and the global pandemic that exposed the true nature of man? In essence, this work is about what it means to be human. An existential question that most people grapple with, even more so during the isolation of quarantine implemented during the first national lockdown. Mpumelelo came face to face with the precariousness of (Black) life and in turn sought aid from what he perceived as an entity beyond the self

Street photography

As lockdown eases London's street life returns

The busy workaday life of one Soho worker

Slightly Disheveled Businessman

Solid Looking Structures

May or may not be betting men

For me, this image shows the waist that we leave behind whether that be on our roads in our parks or even on our beaches.

This was taken just after lockdowns started to be eased and we could see people getting back to their morning commute. Walking across is very busy crossroad.

This photograph was taken only a few months after the worst terrorist attack on US soil ever. It was a time of extreme unknown and uncertainty. The photograph shows a group of New York Police officers on Motorbikes just before a major demonstration through Manhattan took place. It was capturing the police officer who glanced over at me and made that eye contact which makes this just a great photo.

My work has always been influenced by my natural surroundings be it in my hometown or in places I've been to since young.

Taken from city buses, these images reveal people in their daily travels, and suggest stories about where they’re going and what is on their minds. The bus stops and street corners act like stages for little dramas to play out.

This is a piece that I wanted to convey the strange experience as we move on through life feeling at points lost, confused and detached. Gliding through our lives with a melancholic grace resulting in a dream state as we all relatively feel incomplete. However, I believe that these negative parts of our life can in the end develop into beauty. Therefore, through this collage I wanted to give relief and consolidation to the viewer, a way to connect in large quantities through my art for those experiencing loss, although at the same time giving the dull snippets of life beauty.

Through the artist and model Daniel Owino, i explored some parts of a place we call home.

Street in Oxford

Street in Oxford

This image is part of a sequence of photographs I took during a walk around my home city of Edinburgh in October 2022. They – literally – reflect my fascination with shop windows and the way objects, buildings shapes, colours and reflections mix and mingle in them to create multi-layered and often surreal images. They are a perfect metaphor for the way I play with ideas in my head and combine them with details I discover while walking around.

This image is part of a sequence of photographs I took during a walk around my home city of Edinburgh in October 2022. They – literally – reflect my fascination with shop windows and the way objects, buildings shapes, colours and reflections mix and mingle in them to create multi-layered and often surreal images. They are a perfect metaphor for the way I play with ideas in my head and combine them with details I discover while walking around.

This image is part of a sequence of photographs I took during a walk around my home city of Edinburgh in October 2022. They – literally – reflect my fascination with shop windows and the way objects, buildings shapes, colours and reflections mix and mingle in them to create multi-layered and often surreal images. They are a perfect metaphor for the way I play with ideas in my head and combine them with details I discover while walking around.

A celebration of Scarboroughs public art gallery

A girl with orange ballon and a woman in chador in the oldest neighborhood of Tehran,capital of Iran.

When I took this shot, I was on my way to work a night shift at the ICU where I worked. This was the surrounding neighbourhood has lots of vans and caravans where people live . I would walk past this area regularly to get to work and I would always admire the area at night as the green leaves would be beautifully lit. What was interesting when I took this shot is that an ambulance came rush on by and I just thought about what was in store for me when I got to work.

Street

street

street

street observation